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Completion Thread 2019: Would You Buy That for a Dollar?

Here goes...

01. RoboCop (arcade)

725.700/1 credit clear on defaults & perfect on both shooting stages

Hearing about this in the 2018 completion thread just made me want to go for it. I tried, & tried... now I've finally got it.
Stage 5 was a real tear jerker at first until I got the pattern down. Yes, it is a damn tough game. That life bar can be sucked away rather quickly.

You'll see a trick used on the stage 6 boss. Don't dare call it a cheat.

Man, these games have gotten huge. Oath in Felghana and Origins are awesome and super-focused games, where VI, VII, and Celceta felt like they leave the door open for more grinding and have a less "obvious" XP curve due to their size. I'm not a huge fan of that or of the three-character system that's been around for the past couple games. VIII follows in the footsteps of VI, VII, and Celceta like that, but the new stuff is so good: the over-the-shoulder perspective is awesome, your characters blast around at the speed of the Doom marine, you spend a lot of time earlier in the game running around gorgeous blue-sky coastal areas with the most perfect video game adventure music, and there's something very satisfying about how the castaway village plot leads you to gaining access to more and more of the island. The plot feels a bit episodic at times, but this allows for some cool chapters like a murder mystery and ghost pirate ship. Many of the enemies being dinosaur-themed was pretty unique, too.

I started this one on Inferno mode, and it holds up pretty well for being the hardest of five difficulty levels. Eventually the combat becomes extremely focused on Bayonetta-style dodging (for Witch Time no less) and/or parrying, but this definitely stays engaging enough to carry the game. That said, I definitely started to dip below the level curve late into the game, and at the very last boss fight of the 65 hour campaign I decided to drop down to Nightmare difficulty. Getting through the kinda-lame first half of the fight just wasn't gonna happen without me gaining like ten more levels, and I wasn't about to grind that out lol. Still, recommended, and even if you're not playing on the harder difficulty levels this game thoroughly rules.

I feel like this year I want to keep track of what I play like some of ya'll.

1) God of War

Got it for Christmas and finished it last night. It's very good, but I'm not sure I agree with all the GotY nods its getting. I got to the point that I knew I was heading to the last area next so I grinded out both optional areas, beat all the Valks and maxed out everything. Then when you go to the final area theres zero combat and it's pretty anticlimactic other than the Loki reveal.

This is fantastic. There have been a lot of throwback first person shooters this decade, but I don't think any of them have been this strong. It's extremely in the Doom and Quake mold (FAST player movement, bunny hopping, tons and tons of enemies, knot-like maps with colored keys, etc), but with some neat new stuff like simulated physics props you can smash enemies with and modern-style sliding. There's an excellent cast of distinct enemies, and while the inspirations from Doom and Quake are extremely clear, there are a few key unique behaviors that spice things up. None of the enemy attacks are hitscan, either, keeping combat strictly about avoidable projectiles and never leaving you wondering where you're being hit from. The weapons and items hit the big Quake/Doom highlights, but there are a few really cool surprises in there like episode 3's sword, which is basically Doom's Berserk mode given a few more mechanical wrinkles and a permanent spot in the player's inventory or episode 2's Superhot needle, which does what you think it does. Tying this stuff together are three well-made episodes: the first one is a run through some kinda so-so rural locations (carried by the game's excellent core mechanics), but the second and third are fantastically varied and surreal and they introduce new enemies, items, and weapons at just the right pace all the way up to the final fight. The soundtrack is incredible (think Doom 2016) and the map design hooks into it better than in the classics by having a lot of manually-placed playback triggers. The visuals mostly hit a Thief 1 level of fidelity and manage to not show too many seams (the enemies look a bit worse than those in the games Dusk is trying to emulate but the environments are great).

The only real complaint I have is minor and pretty predictable. The saving model is the same as Doom's, so you'll be having to decide between restarting maps completely when you die (which kinda sucks in the more maze-like layouts) or managing your own quicksaves. I'm particularly annoyed that it doesn't autosave at the start of each map, as that seems like an obvious and easy modern QoL thing and it would have saved me from a couple instances where I quickloaded myself back a level lol.